We hear it a lot. A company is limping along with a dated or homegrown CRM system.
Users are not happy with the solution. Managers feel their users’ pain and experience personal pain with the current system.
Much research has been done on potential replacements for the old system. Still, when the final decision maker within the organization sees the price proposal, he or she says, “We are not spending that kind of money when we already have a system in place.”
How can you sell your CEO on a new CRM system when your CEO only views it as an expensive technology acquisition?
1. Present them with economic pains
It’s usually easier to identify feature pain than economic pain. Hence, a CEO often hears about frustrations with the current system rather than the financial costs of the system. An example of economic distress is, “IT spends 60 man/hours per month maintaining our current system.”
2. Ask them to sit down with end users
Suppose they spend some one-on-one time with end users. In that case, your CEO will have an opportunity to understand areas of lost productivity with the current system, such as how much time is spent on manual tasks that could be automated with a more flexible CRM solution.
3. Show them CRM success metrics
Some CRM vendors pay companies to survey their customers and then tabulate results about percentage increases in sales, percentage decreases in customer attrition, and other essential business gains from companies investing in their systems.
4. Get your CEO involved in the CRM evaluation process
Request that they attend vendor presentations. Better still, get them to actively participate in vendor presentations rather than sitting quietly in the back corner of the room.
5. Get them to reveal their business pains
Do they experience frustrations during meetings when nobody can produce the data that they’re requesting?
Is lack of visibility to sales opportunities or customer issue resolution times hampering their ability to help increase sales or increase customer satisfaction and loyalty?
Through more profound research on the economic costs of the current system and by encouraging greater involvement on the part of your CEO, you’ll be in a better position to sell them on the benefits of switching to a new CRM system.
